Sophie Bocher

Sophie lives and works in Paris. Ceramics have been the basis of his work for 25 years. For the past ten years, she has been exploring other directions, after having been introduced to molding techniques (plaster, resin and concrete, bronze). She collaborates with designers and architects, responds to private commissions but also produces large formats within the framework of the Ministerial Convention 1 building, 1 work. Her work is presented in NYC at the Studio Tashtego and Emmanuelle G. Gallery galleries, and occasionally in galleries in Paris (La Galerie Grès in particular).

Contrary to the constant search for meaning in our society, his view of creation is that of a sensory and shared experience of the moment, of an intimate, almost meditative emotion. His modeling work always starts with a simple sandstone, chosen for the freedom it allows in formal research. The first lines drawn with a knife seek to find a point of balance, to indicate a direction for the spontaneous deployment of the form. They thus appear quickly, like the restoration of an initial intuition, then reveal themselves little by little, in the search for a harmony between the rough and the smooth, the shadow and the light, the intertwining of shapes and areas, to achieve an apparent simplicity left to free interpretation.

I see this residency as a time to dare, experiment, and give my work other directions. My usual soil is black soil, but for this project I am more likely to use white sandstone. While I work with enamels in colored areas, this project directs me more towards mixtures of engobes and rather pastel enamels worked by touches and superimpositions, with chamotte inlays, direct imprints of mineral or vegetable elements, or indirect with elements extracted from plaster molds. The idea of “Bord de terre, Bord de mer” suggests to me the desire to blur the physical border between land and sea by working in contact with them. My work in sculpture is very focused on this notion of contact, even intertwining. It will also be a question of thinking about human markers in this contact, how man intervenes. (possibly by fingerprints or by embedding objects) From the start when reading the project I thought of the visual markers of foam and sea leashes. I like the idea of foam that evokes the end of the sea and the trace it leaves on the beach and which is destined to disappear.

This idea is similar to that of Nagori in Japan, literally “the imprint of the waves”, the nostalgia for the season that we only let go with regret. A word that anchors the trace of what is already gone. As is foam, as is also for me sculpture, which allows me to crystallize, to materialize a moment. I looked for a sculptural form that would unite marine and terrestrial elements. And I found this form in sea foam, a mineral that floats in the Mediterranean and whose properties are similar to those of clay. So I imagine possibly creating several blocks with different aspects. Some sepiolites become smooth over time, visually approaching the appearance of cuttlebone, others are much more irregular depending on the impurities present in the environment during its formation. This foam will therefore be one of the sculptural supports for the interconnections between marine and terrestrial elements. Beyond that, I am also looking for interconnections between materials including marine and coastal elements treated in a raw way, and more elaborate ceramics. (wood/sand/molten glass/ rock/shell/).